From reading Twitters and a few other places
I take it that some of my fellow liberals and progressives like Ross’s new column more than his other recent columns, particularly his now notorious Texas vs. California column. I’m with them, incidentally, and I do think that Ross’s column today is better than his last effort.
I can’t help but think, though, that a big part of the reason that I and other liberals prefer this column to the last is because we think that we’ve won the argument against social conservatism. This isn’t a matter of Ross, heterodox conservative that he is, endorsing a position that liberals like; he is endorsing a socially conservative position. But I think that liberals don’t mind arguments to social conservatism that much (the way they do arguments to economic conservatism, ala Texas vs. California) because they think that, politically, social conservatism is a settled question, and we’ve won. I don’t think that’s entirely true, personally, and if I put them on the spot, I imagine many liberals wouldn’t admit to feeling that way. But my suspicion is that liberals are more amenable to a column like today’s because they think that, on this set of issues, we can’t lose.
It seems like you’re arguing that liberals are more comfortable with debates on social conservatism than on economics. Actually, I’d flip that construction. I think that liberals are far more confident about the correctness of our economic views than the social issues. Between the success of Bill Clinton’s moderately liberal economic policies and the recent good indicators of the Obama approach so far, coupled with the enormous Republican screw-up last year, I think there is a real case to be made that Democratic economic policies are much more robust and successful than GOP policies. Had the Republicans got their way with a spending freeze, we’d definitely be over 10% unemployment right now. Perhaps we’d be near 20%. We can argue over how much of this success was due to the stimulus, but even honest conservatives (like Doug Holtz-Eakin) can’t deny that there’s been some positive effect.
On social issues, though, I think that there’s room for hope on any number of issues based on polling of the “Millennials”, though not so much on the abortion issue. But times change, and eventually social conservatism will evolve, just like it has in the past. A generation ago, that term had all sorts of backward racial connotations that it no longer possesses. Eventually, they’ll shed the homophobia, and they’ll maybe even shed the blatant hypocrisy that excuses the likes of Sanford, Vitter and Ensign while castigating Clinton, Spitzer and Craig. I think that social conservatism at its best can offer a sense of continuity to the past and to tradition, but even at its best it is susceptible to moral vanity and pride. Add to this the desire to possess “the answers”, even though religion more often than not provides mysteries instead of answers that necessitate more questions, and I don’t see socioconnery going out of style any time soon. It will change, and it will change to something less hateful, if it wants to stay relevant. Twas ever thus.Report
Mmm. I was unclear. I don’t mean that liberals are more certain about social issues than economic issues. I mean that we tend to believe that we are more likely to get our way with social issues, for the simple reason that the history of social norms since the ’60s moves in a rather obvious and major direction away from social conservatism and towards social libertinism.
I didn’t mean to make an argument about certitude in policy, in other words, just an argument about our beliefs in popularity.Report
Actually, I thought this was just as dumb a column as usual. Most social conservatives that I’ve met came to it a little later in life…Or gave in to the temptations of the flesh as teenagers and young adults. A few easy examples, not counting the Jim Bakkers and the Ted Haggards out there. David Vitter paid a hooker to dress him up in diapers; Mark Sanford chased tail around the world; John Ensign was banging someone in his office; Sarah Palin’s daughter appeared to be having sex in her house. And what to make of Larry Craig? etc. etc. etc.
Ross, on the other hand, doesn’t really seem like a regular social conservative. He’s more of a puritan with willpower. Didn’t he marry his first girlfriend? He gives it away when he characterizes the 40-year-old virgin thusly: “Still a virgin in middle age? Not to worry — you’ll find a caring, foxy woman who’s been waiting her whole life for an awkward, idealistic guy like you.”
Sorry, but Ross missed the point. Andy had the chance to nail her on date #2 and totally blew it. There was no idealism – he was just a wuss stuck in an early teenager’s mindset and so he missed the opportunity. Judd Apatow’s point was that Andy needed to “get the pussy off the pedestal” and get some guts.Report
Exactly!! While it wasn’t as brutally bad as his earlier columns, Douthat still missed the point by a mile. Then again, the good thing about art of any kind is that people get out of it what they want to.Report